


the sun will rise, and we will try again

by wanderlustnostalgia



Series: teashop blues [2]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Bending (Avatar TV), Angst, Concussions, Enemies to Friends, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Injury, Injury Recovery, Major Character Injury, Sports
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-10
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:54:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26388262
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wanderlustnostalgia/pseuds/wanderlustnostalgia
Summary: Suki falls, and gets back up.
Relationships: Iroh & Suki & Zuko, Iroh & Suki (Avatar), Mai/Zuko (Avatar), Sokka/Suki (Avatar), Suki & Ty Lee (Avatar), Suki & Zuko (Avatar)
Series: teashop blues [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1820092
Comments: 8
Kudos: 32





	the sun will rise, and we will try again

**Author's Note:**

> Suki best girl, also Suki/Sokka is one of the best canon pairings to grace this Earth and you can fight me on that. Really wish we'd gotten more of her development and also her relationships with the others in-series but there's a lot of good Suki-centric fic out there and I highly highly recommend all of it.
> 
> Title taken from "Truce" by Twenty One Pilots.

The first time Suki walked into Jasmine Dragon it was pouring, a storm the likes of which Ba Sing Se hadn’t seen in years and she couldn’t remember having ever experienced on Kyoshi, where the weather was mild and she spent most of her days on the field, in the dojo, or on the beach. It was pouring and she was freezing and pretty sure she’d flunked her last midterm, and getting back to her dorm involved either waiting an hour for the bus or walking all the way across campus, navigating a vast maze of buildings swarmed with students trying to get to class and tables staffed by relentlessly loud club recruiters and unsettlingly omnipresent CSOs to the edge of the inner ring where the residence halls were.

Her hands shook as she pushed open the door of the first shop that looked warm, drenched from head to toe in only a hoodie and her last clean pair of jeans. The students scattered throughout the various tables were either warming their hands around mugs of steaming tea or alternating between feverish typing and shotgunning boba like their lives depended on it, looking every bit as dead inside as Suki felt.

When the old man at the counter asked if he could get her anything, Suki shrugged, unwilling to let the tears brimming in her eyes spill over and the stress of the week (of the _month_ ) burst forth in a mess of uncontrollable, wracking sobs. He smiled gently and gestured for her to sit down, and once she’d found an empty seat she slumped over and buried her head in her arms. It was cold and she was tired but the air was scented with a thousand teas, and for the first time in a while, she felt like she could _breathe._

He reappeared at her table with a cup of something fragrant. “Free of charge,” he said, sliding it toward her, and though she wanted to protest it was cold and she was tired and the warmth seeped into her hands, into her bones, the soothing taste of jasmine lingering on her tongue. He sat with her as she drank, and in between sips she shared her worries and he, in turn, dispensed advice and regaled her with stories of his travels (and a ride back to her dorm, which she politely refused).

“You remind me of my nephew,” he told her. “Life has not been kind to him, and he has fallen many times. But he always gets back up,” he said, placing a gentle hand on hers, “and so will you.”

The owner—Iroh—sent her on her way with a box of various tea blends from countries she’d never heard of and an order of steamed dumplings he wouldn’t let her pay for, plus the name of a shop where she could get a deal on good umbrellas. As she sat at the bus stop, making her way through her _xiao long bao,_ she felt a little less cold and a little less tired.

\--

A few weeks later she brought her girls in, sweaty and rumpled and flushed with the giddy high that comes with clinching the number one spot in the division (as a freshman, no less—and yes, even though it was her first season and she still had a long way to go before team captain she already thought of them as _her_ girls). They took up half the space near the counter and as she herded them into the corner, away from the entrance, Suki couldn’t help but notice the boy at the register, wondering whether his skin was naturally that pale or if he’d blanched at the prospect of having to remember so many orders at once.

She lingered at the back of the line while the others ordered, some taking forever to decide and others stalling to flirt with the increasingly flustered barista, who kept shooting panicked glances at Iroh over his shoulder. _Ah, so there’s the nephew._ As she scanned the menu, her eyes caught the special: calamansi jasmine. She hadn’t had calamansi since she’d left Kyoshi.

“And for you?” he asked flatly as she approached the counter, eyeing her with a mixture of suspicion and dread.

“I’ll have the special. With boba,” Suki said, watching with satisfaction as his shoulders relaxed. His good eye widened as she tipped him and he stammered out something about how she really didn’t have to do that, she probably needed the money more than he did, but she merely quirked an eyebrow and gestured to the horde of girls chattering behind her, identical save for the skew of their ponytails and the smudges of dirt on their uniforms. “The least we could do,” she said.

He managed to get all their drinks out without messing up a single one. “If I never have to look at these stupid tapioca balls again, I’ll be happy” he grumbled, passing Suki her drink.

“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said, “but I can make it up to you if you like.” She stuck out a hand. “I’m Suki.”

“Zuko,” he said, shaking it. “Thanks for not taking five hundred years to order. I, uh. I appreciate it.”

“You know, she really is a lovely girl,” Iroh called out from the back. His head popped into view behind Zuko. “We’re always hiring! You can show my nephew here how to live a little! All he and his last girlfriend did was listen to angry punk music and talk about how much they hate the world.”

“Uncle,” groaned Zuko, turning bright red. Suki smiled.

He wasn’t quite her type, but he did seem like he could use a friend.

\--

Suki will be honest: there’s a lot about her first year of college she didn’t expect.

She didn’t expect classes and exams to be as difficult as they were; she didn’t expect the culture of Ba Sing Se to be so competitive, coming from Kyoshi where everything was collaborative and the objective was learning to understand rather than get ahead in the workforce; she didn’t expect soccer tryouts to be so grueling or tournaments to be so cutthroat; she didn’t expect to feel so adrift in the unfamiliarity of it all, scrabbling for purchase against the waves of homesickness.

She also didn’t expect to make friends so quickly—or to like a boy, despite his flaws, and realize he liked her back.

Early in second term, she met Sokka, and after she schooled him in arm wrestling and soccer he begged her to help him train, then introduced her to Katara, Aang, and Toph. Suddenly Suki found herself saddled with people she never could have imagined meeting on Kyoshi: people with such wildly different experiences from hers, who perceive the world in such different ways, who have traveled further than Suki could have possibly dreamed, experienced heartbreak and tragedy and come out the other side with plenty of heart and humor to spare.

So now it’s the end of the year, and she’s sprawled out on the couch at Jasmine Dragon with her head in Sokka’s lap, and Sokka and Zuko are arguing across the room about whether humanities is better than STEM, and Aang’s trying to mediate while Toph eggs them on and Katara seems caught between yelling at them for disrupting her studying and trying not to laugh, and as Sokka cards his fingers through her hair, gentle despite his shrill yelling, Suki thinks she really couldn’t have asked for anything better than this.

Everything and everyone in their place.

What could possibly go wrong?

(Famous last words.)


End file.
